


Feeling is First

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [174]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avenger Loki (Marvel), Avenger Reader (Marvel), Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Food as a Metaphor for Love, I Love You, Idiots in Love, Kissing, Love, M/M, POV Loki (Marvel), Pre-Relationship, Reader-Insert, Stark Tower, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29450535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: There are plenty of ways to say “I love you” without actually saying the words. It takes Loki too long to realize that.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [174]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 10
Kudos: 201





	Feeling is First

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of a long one, so I posted it a little bit earlier than usual for those of you who are able to read this before bed? I know it’s been done again and again, even within the context of these Lullabies, but I just felt like writing a little collage of moments in your relationship with Loki. This one was heavily inspired by several “Ways to Say ‘I Love You’” posts I’ve seen floating around Tumblr. The title is from an ee cummings poem, but I’m not sure it’s wholly related. It just got stuck in my head and wouldn’t let me go! Happy Valentine’s Day. If I could, I would give each and every one of you one of those grade-school Valentines and a heart lollipop.

Before you, Loki had never put much thought to the multitudes of ways there were to say something like ‘I love you’. Why would he? Not once in his long, long life had such sentiment done him any favors. In fact, from where he stood, it seemed a lot like the damned emotion caused more trouble than it could possibly be worth. It got people hurt. It lost them battles. It tied them up in knots inside and never offered any kind of relief. 

At its best, love was foolish nonsense. At its worst, it toppled entire realms.

Life was difficult enough as it was—existing in Thor’s shadow, attracting his father’s ire and disdain, earning nothing but suspicion from the nobles and people of Asgard. When he dropped from the Bifrost, he did not spend long aching over some strapping young man left behind. When the Titan began to take him apart again and again, he did not cry out for a wide-eyed maiden’s gentle touch. In many ways, it made things easier. It served him well.

When he found himself trapped in the Tower with the so-called heroes who wanted him dead, it would be an understatement to say that he was displeased. Of course, he kept that to himself, unwilling to give them any more incentive to hate him, but he seethed inside. Too many men around him told him that it would be good for him, or that it would be good for Midgard, but Loki knew better. The others in the Tower were little more than overpowered babysitters, meant to keep him from stepping out of line. No one knew about what he’d survived, and he was dead-set on keeping it that way. But it made day-to-day life uncomfortable at best.

You had been a brand new face. The memory of his first time on Midgard was a blur at best, but something in the back of his mind told him that he would certainly have remembered seeing your face. When you looked at him, it was rarely with the skeptical, narrowed eyes of the others. You smiled at him. He wrapped his scorn even more tightly around himself, wore his disdain like a shield, but it did very little. You kept smiling at him.

One evening, he’d slipped out of his quarters in search of something to eat. Thor often invited him to join the others for dinner—the ones who remained in the Tower all gathered together for their evening meals like some ridiculous kind of family. The first and only time that Loki ever took him up on it, Banner gripped the edge of the table with white knuckles and Romanoff gave him the uncomfortable sensation that she was imagining what it’d be like to tear his throat apart. He did not join them again.

But he hadn’t waited long enough. The lights in the kitchen were still on, and, as he approached the doorway, he could hear movement from inside. Against his better judgment, he did not turn on his heel and retreat. He forced himself to step inside and go to the refrigerator as though it meant nothing, and he waited for the gasp of horror when you noticed him.

It didn’t come.

You remained quiet as you finished up whatever it was that you were doing at the sink. Washing something? It didn’t matter. He rummaged through the offerings on the shelves, but nothing held much interest for him. For one who had grown up eating only the finest delicacies prepared by the most talented chefs in Asgard, Midgardian fare was...disappointing. How Thor choked it down so happily night after night was a mystery to him.

“Hey, just the guy I was hoping to see!” You came up behind him, causing him to straighten up and spin towards you in a single jerky movement. When you stepped even closer, he wanted to cringe away from you, but held himself steady. Instead of touching him, though, you merely ducked a little and reached past him to retrieve a covered dish from the fridge behind him. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t quick enough at dinner to save any of the actual _dinner_ for you, but this baker whose shop Tony saved last week sent over a strawberry pie and I did manage to save a piece for you before the rest of them scarfed it all down.” You pressed the dish into his hands and then stepped away.

And that was it. You didn’t hang around and wait for him to thank you. You didn’t linger as though you expected him to make some kind of fuss over your action. You just dried your hands on a dishtowel and offered him a soft smile before bidding him goodnight on your way out the door. 

And that pie was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted.

***

Not much changed—not that he expected it to. He kept hiding himself away, and the others kept imagining smearing the streets with his entrails. It was just the way of things. 

It wasn’t often that he was sent out into the field with anyone except Thor himself, but, once, he had to team up with you to complete a mission somewhere out in the world. He was a little surprised at how fierce you were out there. In the Tower, he’d started to think of you as something as soft and sweet as that pie had been. You kept smiling at him, here and there, despite the way his face would always curl into a scowl, or just go cold and blank when you did. But you fought with a viciousness that he hadn’t thought to expect. You were ruthless and cunning and brutal, and it was a pleasure to watch you work.

He lost sight of you only once, but that was enough. Someone else got their hands on you and dragged you to the center of the room with a blade pressed to your throat. The man crowed out into the cavernous space, calling out to whoever had accompanied you, and mused aloud with barely-concealed delight about what information he might be able to extract from you before your body gave out.

Even from a distance, Loki could see how dark your eyes were, and how hollow. You told your captor over and over again that you were here alone, and tried to tell him that he wasn’t going to get another word out of you, but Loki could hear the way your voice trembled. Likely your captor did too. He laughed and pressed the blade a little deeper. 

He acted before he had the time to come up with a plan. His only goal was to get you out of that man’s grips, preferably right before he absolutely tore him apart. He heard shouting as he charged at him, heard various projectiles whizzing past him in the air, but none of that mattered. In a haze, he took out all of the agents who were attempting to swarm him, and by the time he was standing above you with the scent of blood thick in the air, the room was quiet again. 

He fought, hard, to hide the way his hands trembled long after the fight was over. Battles had long been part of his life; this one should not have affected him like this. You said nothing as the two of you completed what you’d been sent here to do and immediately headed back to the jet. You didn’t even seem to be looking at him. 

But then you dropped into a seat beside him and, once again, pressed something into his hand. This time it was a glass with a rosy amber liquid. You held a similar glass of your own, and raised yours towards him with a grim smile. “Drink this,” you said in a low voice. “You’ll feel better.”

He took a sip, and tried not to laugh. It was some type of Midgardian liquor. He’d need a lot more than these few drops of the stuff to feel any different from usual, but he could appreciate the fact that you’d thought of him. He did not speak as you took a drink from your own glass and then tried not to watch as you trailed your tongue along the rim.

His hands stopped shaking.

***

That time, things changed a little. The others heard about the mission and about the complications, and perhaps the full report of what had happened began to circulate. Stark pulled him aside once and reached out to touch his shoulder as he thanked him for looking after you. Loki wanted to grit out something like “Isn’t that what anyone else would have done?”, but he didn’t. Stark just smiled with one corner of his mouth and then patted Loki’s shoulder again. There was a weight in his touch that gave Loki the sneaking suspicion that there was plenty more left unsaid, but he didn’t press the issue.

The others still didn’t like him, and that was fine. Midgardians didn’t live long anyway—he had, what, only a few decades before they were gone? It was not in his nature to worry about how they felt about him. But he did notice that things grew...less cold. With the exception of you, no one ever looked particularly thrilled to see him, and genuine smiles were just as rare as ever, but Romanoff stopped staring daggers at him. Sometimes Rogers would give him a stiff nod if Loki caught him staring, and the other one—Barnes—stopped watching him as though he were a target.

Thor invited him to join the rest of them for a movie in the sitting room. Loki laughed in his face, of course, and tried to send him off with a dismissive wave and a quip about how he’d rather flay himself alive, but his brother was especially bull-headed that night. With a sly look on his face, he said your name, and told Loki that you were sure to be happy to see him. 

It didn’t change his mind, though, and Loki still wound up slamming the door in his face, but when he returned to what he’d been doing before Thor knocked, he found that he couldn’t shake the thought of you and how you might react if he came to join you.

He stayed there in his room for quite some time, very pointedly focused on whatever it was that he’d been doing before Thor’s visit, and most certainly not thinking about possibly seeing that warm smile curl your lips. But he did get hungry, after a while, and he knew without thinking about it that he was sure to find some sort of plate of food in the refrigerator. Over time, you’d gotten better and better at saving him something at dinner, and he’d gotten better and better about allowing himself to accept it.

So when he left his room, he did it only so he could go and get something to eat. He could get to the kitchen without even passing by the sitting room, and he planned to. But halfway there, he thought better of it. Why shouldn’t he stop by, just to peek his head around the corner and roll his eyes at whatever you were watching? No one would know.

Except for the blaring television, the room was quiet. Someone had turned all the lights off, and everyone’s attention was directed at the screen. Above the back of the couch closest to him, he could see the back of your head. You sat alone, folded into the corner of the otherwise-empty couch. He crept a little closer to lean stiffly against the couch. What harm could it do? No one would know.

It wasn’t hard to figure out the plot of the film. Midgardians were so predictable, after all, and their media was no different. What he hadn’t expected was how easily he would get caught up in the story. He found himself relaxing a bit as the characters moved about on the screen. He almost cared about what would happen to them. They were likable, after all, and smarter than he would have expected. 

The joke caught him off guard. In the heat of an argument, one of the characters spat out some pun, some piece of wordplay, and the sheer unexpectedness of something like that made him laugh despite himself. Your head turned towards him immediately, but you did not flinch away. The laughter dried in his throat and he stood up a little straighter again, backing out of the room without looking at you. 

He did his best not to think about what he’d done as he ducked into the kitchen. Sure enough, there was a plate of food waiting for him. Some part of him wanted to ignore it, perhaps as a punishment for being so foolish, but he couldn’t help but reach for it. You had a way of making even Midgardian food taste better. Just as he was uncovering it and trying to decide whether to heat it up or eat it cold, he heard you step through the doorway.

“I didn’t expect to see you down here tonight,” you said in that soft voice. He didn’t look at you. There wasn’t truly much to say in response to that, but it was beginning to feel wrong for him _not_ to respond when you spoke to him. 

“Well, I thought I’d come and see what passed for entertainment for Midgardians.” But that response was worse than not responding at all, wasn’t it? His voice sounded too cold, too aloof. No one should speak to you in that way. He forced himself to look at you, then, hoping that he could soften his harshness with an attempt at a smile, but you didn’t look hurt. You were smiling at him.

“I like the sound of your laugh.” You tugged nervously on your earlobe, but you didn’t look away. Something new swelled within him, something warm. Probably he was just getting overly hungry. “I wish you could laugh more often.”

He could practically hear the blood rise into your cheeks, and the quick way that you closed off your body language to him made him feel like he was missing something. You apologized under your breath, then, and wished him a good night, and then hurried away—not back into the sitting room, but away to your own room.

He tried not to think about how he might have liked to join you on the couch.

***

He began forcing himself to spend more time near you. He did not forget the strange ache he felt that movie night, when he went back to his quarters alone and ate in silence. In a way, perhaps he was trying to fill that loneliness, or else just make you feel better about your confession. It was awkward at first, and went against nearly everything he’d ever thought about, but he joined you in quiet activities in the Tower. The first time he found you in the sitting room and sat down to read alongside you, you did not leap to your feet and flee, but neither did you begin to blather on to fill the silence. Encouraged, he kept joining you, and now those quiet moments with you had become unexpectedly important to him.

The two of you were sent on more and more missions together. He got to see you work in the field, and came to trust you—perhaps not yet with his life, but certainly with his well-being. You were soft, but sturdy, and charmingly stubborn when you set your mind to something. All it would have taken was a single word from anyone else in the Tower and he knew he would have retreated again, but no one teased either of you about your increasing camaraderie. Later, he would suspect that you’d threatened them with bodily harm if they even attempted it.

One night, he was alone. You’d been gone for close to two weeks now, and he still had yet to get used to the emptiness of the Tower without your presence. Surely he wasn’t _worried_ about you, because why would he worry over a Midgardian, but he could accept that he wouldn’t feel quite settled until you were back home. He sat on the sofa in the sitting room, reading to himself and trying not to think about how you should be there with him.

It was like he’d summoned you. He was just turning a page when he became aware of a presence in the doorway. Over time, his senses had become somewhat less acute. He no longer felt the need to be constantly on guard. That might have bothered him, if it wasn’t such a relief not to constantly be looking over his shoulder. He looked up and saw you leaning against the door. You looked exhausted. There was usually so much life in your eyes, and your face was usually so brightly-animated, but tonight you stood there with only the slightest smile at the corner of your mouth. He could tell from the way you held yourself that you were hurt, which made anger stab through him even though he could tell that it wasn’t truly serious. You were battered and bruised, but not bleeding out. 

As soon as you met his eyes, you stepped into the room, and, without a word, you came to join him on the sofa. You sat closer tonight than perhaps you ever had, fitting yourself against his side. Without truly meaning to, he lifted his arm to drape it around your shoulders and hold you closer. It didn’t mean anything. It was clear that you needed some kind of comfort, and, if you were coming to _him_ for it, you had to be desperate. It was only right that he offer you what he could. You sighed, a sweet puff of air, and rested your head against his chest like you’d done it a thousand times before. He felt your body relax. That should not have been as intoxicating as it was.

“You’re warm,” you murmured, your voice heavy with gratitude. It stirred something within him. But you didn’t say anything else, only closed your eyes and allowed your head to grow heavier against him.

You fell asleep there, in his arms, and he held you.

***

Things went on. More often than not, you were able to convince him to come to movie nights or Stark parties or simply walks through the city with you. There was something about you that made it easy to let go of his desire to continue holding himself aloof. Spending time with you was comfortable, it was warm, it was safe. And it was certainly better than turning you down and then spending the rest of the night alone in his quarters worrying that this time you’d be hurt enough to stop asking him.

For the most part, the others didn’t really say anything about it, but where before, it seemed that you had threatened them to keep their mouths shut, now it just seemed like there was nothing to say. Every once in a while, if someone came across him alone in the Tower, they’d ask him about you, but even that felt more like curiosity than like pointed barbs.

You still spent a lot of time reading together. Some time ago, he’d started to read aloud to you—when you came back from missions, you were nearly always exhausted like you’d been that first night, and he could tell that you appreciated it when he read to you instead of grilling you about how things had gone. But, slowly, he began to do things like that even without a reason. Having you as an audience made the stories feel so much more engaging. He was no longer stuck in his head on the verge of groaning about Midgardian literature: he could pay attention to the way _you_ paid attention, and listen for your reactions. It was nice.

There’d been a new development in this tradition, however: you started to feel guilty about making him read to you all the time. Sometimes you refused to let him, and instead read your own book aloud to him. He tried to assure you that it didn’t bother him, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to tell you how much he liked reading to you. So, on the nights where your guilt grew too strong, he would allow you to force him to listen, and he’d focus on the sound of your voice.

Tonight, you had tried to wrestle his book away from him. He’d laughed out loud when you first threatened it—laughed at the idea of having to struggle against you—and you’d taken advantage of his momentary distraction to knock him down and sprawl out on top of him. You’d very nearly wrested the book away from him in that moment, and he would certainly need to remember this moment, should he go on underestimating Midgardians in the future. But it didn’t take much to subdue you again, just a well-placed hand to your ribcage, and you’d crumpled against him with giggles bubbling out of you. It seemed so unthinkable that he could do something like that to you, but you never gave him any room to doubt himself. 

So you’d switched tactics, then, making your eyes go big and wide and sad at him, and you waxed poetic about how he was always reading to you and you didn’t want him to strain his beautiful voice. Your voice was just a little too theatrical, and of course that made him laugh again and roll his eyes, but he did stop trying to get the book back from you. 

And so you read to him. 

You sat there pressed against his side like you always did, lately, and the warmth from your body seeped into him and warmed him from the inside out. You felt solid. You felt unexpectedly _permanent_ there next to him, and you just went on reading like you didn’t notice what it did to him. Over time, he began to realize how little attention he was actually paying to the narrative. You even smelled warm: light and clean like your soap or your shampoo, but with a lovely roundness to the scent that he had to assume came from your exertions with him only moments ago. He kept breathing you in. 

At some point, he allowed his eyes to close. He let himself slip into something like a trance, focusing on nothing more than the sound of your voice and the feel of your body. When had this happened? When had he gone from that cold monster to this...whatever you’d turned him into? And why didn’t he mind it? More accurately: why did he _like_ it?

Without thinking about it, he turned towards you, moved a little closer so he could press his forehead to your temple. You leaned into him without faltering in your words, and that was all he needed. He tightened his arm around your shoulders and tried to breathe through whatever it was that was happening in his chest. 

You trailed off. You didn’t squirm to get away from him or even just move your head to look at him, but he did feel the way you reached to cover his hand with your own. “Are you okay?” As it often was, your voice was tender, concerned. He nodded.

“May I kiss you?”

He didn’t mean to think it. He certainly didn’t mean to say it out loud. Now that he had, he felt his heart stop, so certain that he’d ruined things forever. He forced himself to stay still, forced himself not to tighten his grip on you. 

You barely moved, until you pressed your head a little more firmly against his own. He told himself that he felt you nod. Just the slightest little movement, but still unmistakable: a quick bob of your head. He looked up and immediately met your gaze. You weren’t smiling, but your eyes were soft as you looked at him. You worried your lower lip between your teeth and swallowed before speaking: “Are you sure?”

He responded in the only way he knew how: he surged forward to press his lips against yours.

You tasted a little like strawberries, like uncertain words spoken in quiet rooms and gentle affection with the slightest burn of Midgardian liquor. He knew, then and there, that he’d never tire of the taste of you.


End file.
